Do the amount of LTE bands a phone supports have much of an impact in regards to a reception on a phone?

Have someone one who was using a Samsung J5 Pro on Vodafone at their house and the reception was terrible but with an IPhone 7 they advise they get reception fine, supposedly the IPhone 7 supports a lot more LTE bands than the Samsung J5 Pro?

Moral of the story: avoid cheap Samsung devices, or for that matter, any cheap Android device if you want a decent user experience. An older generation flagship will almost always be a better option than a brand new budget phone.

NZ variant is the SM-J530Y which does support band 28. Telcos wouldn't have touched it if it didn't!

While I would certainly expect the antenna design of an iPhone to beat a Samsung midranger, I wouldn't expect it to be too drastically different these days. Question is, although the phone is running a Voda SIM, is it running Voda software?